Data centers have become a ubiquitous element of modern IT infrastructure, especially in the services sector that requires “always-on” capability. Practically every large IT organization hosts a data center, either in-house or outsourced to major vendors. Furthermore, the recent emergence of the software as a service (SaaS) paradigm or more generically, cloud computing, coupled with emerging Web-based business, social networking and media applications and services have led to a tremendous growth in the number, size, and power densities of data centers. This increase has also been accompanied by equally tremendous increases in the amount of power required to operate cooling infrastructures of the data centers, which has also resulted in increases in the carbon footprints of the cooling infrastructures.
Conventional data centers use up to 50% of the total energy consumed for cooling the conventional data center. However, although there are multiple point cooling solutions available for different components of a conventional data center, the point cooling solutions are typically applied independently of each other and their inter-relationships are not exploited to improve the energy consumption of the conventional data center. The conventional data center is not organized or operated to improve an overall coefficient of performance (COP) of the cooling infrastructure.